Purview of Ramadan

It’s Ramadan Month and it is the ninth month of the Muslim Calendar. It is the holiest month of the year according to Islam, and is without doubt described by many Muslims as the hardest month of the year.

It is during this month that Muslims fast and lasts the entire month. It is the time when Muslims concentrate on their faith and spend less time on the concerns of their everyday lives. It is a time of worship and contemplation and strict restraints are placed on their daily lives.

They are not allowed to eat or drink during the daylight hours. Smoking and sexual relations are also forbidden during fasting. The fast is resumed the next morning and one may eat and drink at any time during the night until you can plainly distinguish a white thread from a black thread by the daylight, then keep the fast until night.

We, the non - Muslims pay full respect on what they used to practice and avert ourselves from doing wanton acts which maybe offensive on their Islam beliefs. They abstain themselves from any form of earthly pleasures, vices and curbing evil intentions and desires regarded as an act of obedience and a way to repent their sins and cleanse their souls. I have taken some excerpts as shown below which may be helpful for us to widen our understanding on what Ramadan constitutes:

* Abstaining from just food, drink, smoking, and sex. This is the basic level, which is ok but doesn’t carry with it much reward or benefit or purification.

* In addition to lying, backbiting, fighting, cursing…etc. In this level, the eyes abstain from looking at what is forbidden to look at (e.g., the private parts of a non-related man or woman), the ears abstain from what is forbidden to hear (e.g., eavesdropping, gossip, backbiting), the hands abstain from the forbidden (e.g., taking bribes, taking another’s possessions without permission, hitting someone unjustly), and the feet abstain from walking to where it is forbidden to walk (like bars). This is the second broad level, and carries with it a greater magnitude of resultant purity and sublimity. Most Muslims fall in this level or the previous one.

* Doing all of the above, in addition to maintaining a meditative or contemplative state of mind, in such a way that the heart and intellect “fast” from thinking of or reflecting upon anything besides God Himself. This is the level reached and occupied by saints.

During Ramadan, the office hours starts at 10am and ends at 4pm. The stores, malls and restaurants are close and it opens in the evening till 3am. Few days to go we will have 10days Eid vacation and we've got more time to visit friends, relatives, love ones and other places that we haven't seen.

In this most sacred month, Muslims feel the peace that comes from spiritual devotion as well as kinship with fellow believers and for us who are not Muslims it’s a perfect time for us to contemplate and rebirth our relationships to God.